Brits are being warned of a ‘inevitable’ food shortages in UK supermarkets.

A shortage of workers in harvesting, manufacturing and HGV drivers means many suppliers are struggling to stock shelves, according to industry insiders.

Morrisons announced it has axed wholesale supply to independent convenience stores amid a lack of delivery drivers.

Morrisons' wholesale customers received a notification that the supermarket will be closing wholesale accounts on June 18.

“Due to the national driver shortage, we’re prioritising our contracted customers and have temporarily suspended sales for a very small number – fewer than 10 – of our ad-hoc customers,” said a Morrisons spokesman.

“We’re working hard with our partners to resolve this as soon as we can. This doesn’t affect any of our other services, for example to food banks, charities, local authorities and wholesalers, as well as contracted wholesale customers.”

Shane Brennan, CEO of the Cold Chain Federation told the Guardian: "The real crisis for food supplies starts now."

“This does feel very different to the past crises we’ve been through – the lockdown and Brexit preparations. This time we’re trying to do the job without labour and that is a very different challenge.”

Brennan warned the impact of staff shortages is being felt across the industry.

He added: “It’s going to be a rolling problem – there will be outages day by day. The supply chain is struggling.”

Nationwide Produce managing director Tim O’Malley told the Fresh Produce Journal that it was a “crisis of national importance”.

He said: “In all my years in fresh produce I’ve never seen anything like this. For example, we supply one of the largest restaurant chains in the UK. It goes without saying how much they’ve suffered throughout the pandemic. However, business is booming for them at the moment.

“On Sunday, our guy who handles their account received a call from our haulier at 1pm to say that due to a shortage of lorry drivers, they cannot deliver anything to any of the depots for our restaurant customer that evening.

“We reminded them that all the goods were graded and packed and ready to go. They said they simply could not deliver due to a lack of drivers. After hours of begging and pleading we managed to get them to deliver to one of the eight depots.”